Chapter 2

“Time, but not the heart,” said Rose. “You see, he went away next day
and broke it off, the engagement, on a postcard written in the train. No
stamp and twopence to pay.”

Mr. Minxton looked at her as if he was considering something and Rose
thought she saw a gleam of tenderness in those boot button eyes.

“Of course it was a lucky escape,” she said. “I don’t know where I’d be
now if I’d married him—I don’t know where I am now,” she added
despondently. “It’s a poor sort of life, come to look at it.”

Mr. Minxton pressed her arm.

“Now, don’t you get downhearted; what you’ve got is that Sunday feeling,
nothing to do but employ your mind, worrying what’s no use worrying for.
Now suppose we were to take a walk on the front, just to stretch our
shoes a bit? What you put on once a week is hard on the corns, I always
say; sitting in chapel won’t ease footleather.”

A faint goldenness clothed Rose’s mental outline; she pressed
coquettishly against Mr. Minxton so that they stumbled at the crossing.

“I don’t say I haven’t something put by, and the house is ours. Father
built that row and the one next is ours too, a tidy bit of rent—but
what’s the good? I don’t get much fun out of it.”

“You don’t want fun,” said Mr. Minxton, sternly. “Worst thing in the
world—fun.”

Glib self defence animated Rose.

“Of course I know that, Mr. Minxton; isn’t likely I’d be forgetting,
with the bringing up I’ve had, and as for young Ed—”

“I don’t think,” Mr. Minxton interrupted firmly, “you acted right
there—letting him have the money.”

“I was took off me feet,” apologized Rose. “You know—the war—”

“I _know_, right enough, but I don’t approve—sensible woman like your
mother.”

“Mother wasn’t herself—bothered, as you might say, and Ed had such a
way of putting things, talked of them Germans—or the Huns—one of them
lot landing and taking it all—the money, I mean.”

“Well,” Mr. Minxton contrived some show of tenderness for feminine
folly, “I don’t say there aren’t excuses—”

“And he didn’t have so much,” said Rose eagerly, “not all, Mr. Minxton.
Mother stood out there, ‘for who knows, Rose,’ she used to say, ‘that
there won’t be Mr. Right popping along some day.’”

And Rose, whose features seemed to have spread and become vague under
the action of the east wind nipping up from the sea, giggled and
snuggled coyly.

“Well, who knows,” conceded Mr. Minxton. “I’m, mind you, not saying that
he _won’t_—”

* * * * *

A delicious sensation of warmth crept round Rose’s rather chilled
members; she felt a faint reflection of those emotions that had
intoxicated her as she had sat before the fire with the soldier and the
whisky, and the cocaine in her tooth and ear—a kind of painful
delirium.

Mr. Minxton remained calm; he surveyed, with a professional glance, the
belt of new shops on the front; shops so carelessly refined that there
were no shutters or blinds to hide the “novelties” within.

“Well, we are getting chick,” he remarked, and stopped before the plate
glass that enshrined “Poppe—modes _et_ robes.”

There was nothing in this window but one shawl.

Pale pink silk with a huge rose in deeper shades of pink embroidered in
one corner and a fringe a foot deep.

This shawl broke on Rose as a sort of apotheosis of her daring
thoughts—marriage—new clothes—a bottom drawer—Mr. Minxton—sitting
hand in hand—in the Pink Shawl.

“Just about your size,” remarked Mr. Minxton. “Rose for Rose—sweets to
the sweet, as they say at the refreshment stall.”

Rose could have fainted with joy; was he going to buy her the Shawl?

“It’s my color to a turn,” she confessed.

* * * * *

Mr. Minxton scattered a superior smile over her yielding mood, then
remarked that there was pork for dinner and if they didn’t want the
crackling spoiled there was urgent need to hurry home.

From that delicious moment the Pink Shawl consolidated the misty chaotic
dreams of Rose; it became to her what America was to Columbus,
unexpected, unlikely, but full of dazzling hope.

She told Mrs. Smith about it, in the same breath as she spoke of Mr.
Minxton’s probable “intentions.”

“Oh, Mother, I’m so happy!”

Mr. Minxton continued his attentions, but he did not buy the shawl;
Rose, with an impulse of exhilarated recklessness, went in and priced
it; a creature who seemed to belong to another sex from Rose,—she was
so polished, neat and suave—said, “Only five guineas” with a wonderful
indifference that both awed and stimulated Rose.

“Why shouldn’t I buy it for myself, Mother? We’ve got a bit put by, and
I must begin to get my things together, you know, what them papers call
the bottom drawer—”

“Well, if you were sure of Mr. Minxton,” said Mrs. Smith, tenderly,
inspired by feminine frivolity but remembering Ed; but Rose thought she
was sure; Mr. Minxton’s “attentions” were unmistakable.

* * * * *

The struggling watering place (they would call it that, which made it
sound like a cattle pool) moribund in the winter, and hysterically alive
in the summer, possessed a struggling newspaper that Rose read carefully
every Wednesday. Most carefully the weddings; the editor was lavish
about the weddings; the most wonderful weddings; almost every week there
was one, an orgy of compliments, beauty, crepe de chine, lucky horse
shoes, white heather, wedding marches—and presents.

Father of Bride—Cheque.

Father of Bridegroom—Another cheque.

Mother of Bride—Crochet set.

Mother of Bridegroom—Silver handled umbrella.

Annie, Willie, Katie, Sally, Muriel, Gladys and Baby Bob—A pen
wiper.

Staff of Messrs. Robem—Rose bowl (electro).

Grannie Mitchem and Grannie Dale—A wool winder.

And so on; Rose could read for hours, up one column and down another,
and then back again.

She had it all planned out; the hymns, the march, the going away dress,
the bridesmaids (carrying bouquets of sweet peas and wearing horse shoe
brooches, the gift of the bridegroom), Mother’s grey gown and white
kids. . .

And then she bought the Shawl.

Drew five pounds, five shillings from the Savings Bank and bought the
Shawl, which was still there wilting in a slightly wilted shop which had
proved slightly too modern for the neighborhood.

* * * * *

Rose’s emotion, till then in crescendo, had a climax; it was when she
brought the Shawl home and draped it round herself, standing in the
piled up, darkish kitchen; the pink silk slipped gracefully from the
tissue paper, and hung in luxurious folds round her stumpy figure.